


The Ears to Hear

by kali



Category: The Tillerman Cycle - Cynthia Voigt
Genre: Coming Out, Food Porn, Gen, Siblings, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-18
Updated: 2006-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali/pseuds/kali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Seventeen Against the Dealer</i>, Maybeth discovers that many things are not always precisely what they seem to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ears to Hear

**Author's Note:**

> Written for alianora

She was glad she had decided on both kinds of fried green tomatoes - the sharp, peppery kind with a tangy bite to them, and sweet ones too, dipped in light brown sandy sugar. It was funny how they still tasted light green, even though they were fried brown, Maybeth thought, but didn't say, as she bit into one and felt the sour and sweet juices well over her tongue. Somehow food tasted like colors, but not always the colors you'd expect, like the slabs of chocolate cake she put into Sammy's lunch - they didn't taste brown like a bar of chocolate, but more like the black of turned over earth on the farms they passed on the way to school, black that looked like it was alive, and had a wet, dark, richness to it.

Maybeth sat quiet, and listened to the sounds of her family eating, and watched them bite deep into the crab cakes and drink down glasses of milk. They didn't talk at first. They always gave their full attention to the food, not eating fast or slow, but letting the taste lie on the tongue before filling their stomachs.

If she looked closely, she'd say their family was both smaller and larger than it used to be. Gram always used to say that paper mulberry trees were like families - if you didn't brace them, the growing would pull them apart. Maybeth knew what she meant, but just now she thought that families were like a meal that you cooked, where each ingredient had its own feeling, like the crispy breadcrumbs or the tender, sweet chunks of crab in the crab cakes, but they all cooked together into something whole.

The table seemed emptier without Dicey sitting at it, but in a way, it was fuller than usual because James was home for a vacation. But also because it included the table in Boston where Dicey and Jeff were probably just now sitting down to eat. That table, she knew, also had some of these same napkins that she had made from an old cranberry colored dress Gram had found for her up in the attic. And because Maybeth could see them eating, maybe one of the recipes that Jeff had shared with her, like the chicken with the pierced lemons roasted inside it, while Dicey, bone-tired from her work at the boat-yard, slid down into her chair. She couldn't exactly explain what she meant but somehow she thought that knowing where someone was, or _what_ someone was meant they were still home. Still and always.

Like Momma, and Maybeth didn't know where that thought had come from, except maybe because she knew where Momma was, buried under the paper mulberry tree, and she'd been thinking of that tree before, and Gram's saying. But maybe it was also that she still knew what Momma was, and the songs she sang to them, her slow, sweet, rounded melodies without accompaniment, until they were old enough to sing them with her.

So many of Momma's songs were questions with no answers but sadness. But they all sang them together, and then the notes were bright swirling colors, golden with harmony.

After dinner, they could sing together again, although they'd miss Dicey's voice and Jeff's guitar in the background. Dicey didn't sing sweet, but she sang true, and Jeff's fingers on the guitar wove the lines of music together into perfect rightness.

Suddenly the phone jangled, breaking abruptly into her thoughts, tangled as they were, and Maybeth jumped a little in surprise. It kept ringing, and Sammy got up to answer it. They could hear his voice rise and fall, and for some reason, he sounded upset.

When Sammy sat back at the table, Maybeth looked at him worriedly. He didn't notice for a moment, but stared at his plate for a while. He looked up after a few seconds of silence, and then made himself smile at them.

"It was Robin," he said. "He and Custer and their girls were going out. They wanted to know if I'd come."

"And are you?" James said, as he took another helping of succotash.

"No," Sammy said harshly. Then he took a deep breath, and smiled at James. "You just got back."

Everyone continued to eat, but Maybeth wished she could go hold Sammy's hand like she used to, when he was worried or upset.

"After dinner we should sing," James said, and smiled across the table at them. "Or is there dessert?"

"I made a pie," Maybeth said. "Deep dish apple pie, with lots of cinnamon."

"Great," James said. "But just one? What are the rest of you going to have?"

"Don't they feed you up there," Gram demanded, like she always did, while Sammy groaned.

James, grinned back at them, as he served himself another helping. "Not like this," he said.

"So tell us some news, young man," Gram said.

"I've actually started this great course," James said.

"You think all your classes are great," Sammy said. "That's not news."

"No, this one is really pretty neat," he said. "I think you'd like it especially, Gram. I decided to take some history of science, because I think it's important to see where things come from before you use them practically."

Maybeth looked at him, puzzled.

"Wait, what does that mean, history of science?" Sammy interrupted. "I mean there's history, and then there's science. Two different subjects."

"It's pretty much like it sounds - the history of scientific discoveries. But we just got finished talking about alchemy, which is really the beginning of science, and what I thought the really fascinating part was not just that they thought of magic as a science, but that through science, we've now basically found all the magical items they were searching for."

"It makes the history look like some of those stories you used to read, King Arthur and all of them," Gram said.

"What do you mean, we've found the magical items?" Sammy asked.

"Well, alchemists were looking for a few different things - the philosopher's stone that would turn base metals, like lead, into precious metals, like gold. And they were looking for the universal remedy - something that would cure all diseases. And the universal solvent - something that would dissolve anything."

"And they've found them?" Sammy said. "You're kidding."

"It's close anyway. You just have to remember that not everything's like it seems at first. Like, radioactivity turns elements like thorium into radium, so that's pretty much like the philosopher's stone that changes metals into other metals. And well, we obviously don't have a universal remedy, but alchemists would probably have thought that antibiotics came pretty close."

"And the last one?"

"That's the best one. It's water," James said. "Water dissolves almost everything. The answer was right under their eyes the whole time."

"That's not true though," Sammy said. "Lots of things don't dissolve in water. Or Dicey couldn't build boats. Or there couldn't be animals that live in the water, like crabs or fish. Or we couldn't take showers."

"Right. I forgot the other essential ingredient," James said, laughing.

"What is it?" Sammy asked impatiently, while Gram looked at them, and one corner of her mouth quirked into a smile.

Maybeth looked from one of her brothers to the other; she wasn't sure she really understood what they were saying, but she could hear the cadence and melody of their voices - James' soothing tenor and Sammy's voice getting older, and deeper, but with cracks in it sometimes, and thought that they might be talking about something other than what they were actually saying.

"Time," James said. "Like most things, you just have to give it enough time."

There was a long pause, and then Sammy said slowly, "It's like a riddle."

"Yeah," James answered, before getting up to get himself a piece of pie.

"Riddles are like thinking around corners," Gram said to Sammy.

"I don't think I can," Maybeth said.

"That's like all of us except James, and maybe Gram," Sammy said. "They're twisty. But mostly Tillermans just go straight ahead until we can't go anymore."

"Twisty," Gram said, lifting an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean," Sammy said.

"And then what do we do?" James said, sitting down and applying himself to his huge piece of pie. "After we can't go anymore?"

"We keep going," Sammy said. "What else is there to do?"

***

"Play for us, Maybeth," Sammy said, after they had done the dishes. "I'm too full to sing yet. How about that thing you've been playing this week."

Maybeth sat down at the piano, and began to play. Something about the way this piece of music laughed its way across the keys always made everyone who heard it smile.

When she finished, James had come up behind her and was reading the top of the music.

"A gigue?" he asked. "What's that, Maybeth, do you know?"

She shook her head. She didn't know what it meant. "It's by Bach," she offered.

"It says it's from Bach's fifth French suite," James said, peering at the sheet music. "French...so that's probably a jig. It sounds like a dance, don't you think? Can you imagine people bouncing around to it at parties hundreds of years ago? I can."

She shook her head again. "I can't really," she said. "But I like how happy it is."

"It sounds really good," James said. "I don't know how you do it. Singing's one thing, but the piano always amazes me somehow - all these black and white keys, all the lines of notes on the page - I don't know how you get the music out."

"It's...I think, I don't know, but...it's just the same," she said, not knowing how to say what she meant. It was like singing, and following the sounds of your own voice so that you knew which way to go. If you listened, you could grab onto the music like a golden rope or something, grab it with both hands and follow it like a line, to wherever it took you. The song always knew which way it wanted to go, you just let your fingers or voice follow it. "It's easy," she finally said. "You just listen to what it wants to do."

"Let's sing now," Sammy said, abruptly. "Okay?"

She played a chord, and began to sing one of Momma's songs:

_The water is wide; I cannot get o'er_

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that can carry two

And both shall row; my love and I

James sat next to her on the piano bench, and joined in, laying his voice alongside hers without harmony, but deeper. Gram sat and listened from the corner armchair, without even pulling out her knitting, but Sammy, after all that, didn't sing at all.

"So," James said, when they had finished singing, and Gram had said good night and gone up to bed. "Have you heard from Phil lately?"

Maybeth felt herself smile, as she usually did when she thought of Phil, with his lazy smile, and eyes that shone when he looked at her; Phil, who had started out as Jeff's friend but now made her think of fresh air, and laughter and growing things.

"He called yesterday," she said.

"That's good," James said.

Sammy made a restless motion, and stood up. "Been sitting still too long," he said. "I'm going to walk down to the water."

James yawned. "Better you than me. I'm going to bed." He said goodnight, and went towards the stairs.

Sammy looked at Maybeth, and gave her a quick smile before walking out the door.

***

Left alone, Maybeth stretched her fingers over the keys, but didn't touch them.

_"Why doesn't Sammy have a girlfriend?" Maybeth overheard Dicey ask Mina once._

"You going to start worrying about that now?" Mina's low, rich voice had answered, teasing Dicey in a way that few people did.

Maybeth sang the words of the song over again very softly, and wondered if the wide water was the same one that dissolved everything. Because in the next verse, everything was gone, and nothing was what it said it was.

_I leaned my back up against an oak_

I thought it was a trusty tree

But first it bent, and then it broke

And so my false love, did unto me

Oh love is handsome and love is fine

And love's a jewel when it is new

But love grows old, and waxes cold

And fades away, like morning dew.

Dicey might be the bravest of them, she thought, and not just because they'd all followed her here, followed her home. But that summer, Dicey hadn't known where they would end up; she was just listening for that rightness that would tell her where to go.

You couldn't make promises based on a feeling, because you never knew how they would turn out. You didn't know what the answers to the questions might be later, if they might change. Momma hadn't. Momma had said she'd never get married. But Dicey had. She did it back then, and she was doing it now, marrying Jeff.

Maybe every song was a promise that you just had to listen for, so you could play the true notes, the notes that you heard and you knew were right, even if everyone else might think they were wrong.

She went out onto the porch and waited for Sammy to come back. Waited to listen, and hear what he would sing.

 


End file.
